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Comcast to Buy 51% of NBC, GE Goes After 49%
An anonymous reader writes to tell us that Comcast and General Electric announced a joint venture yesterday to control NBC Universal, with Comcast coming out with the controlling interest. Comcast's hopes seem to be on succeeding in a marriage of distribution and content, where Time Warner failed. "The deal was approved by the companies' boards, and is subject to regulatory approval. GE said it expects the deal to go through in the third quarter of 2010. Congress has already said it will hold a hearing to investigate whether Comcast will gain 'undue advantages' from the deal that gives it access to programming."
In other news, comcast announced today that they have a revolutionary way of throtteling high-tv viewers during "primetime" hours. While primetime was not explicitly defined (nor was "high-tv viewer"), they promised that this was in the best interest of their customers in order to ensure that everyone gets their fair share.
Seriously though, it'll be interesting to see what happens here. Ads for new NBC shows over broadband anyone?
Starting immediately, CBS and ABC will now only be available as pay per view for all Comcast customers!
So will the Scranton branch be absorbing Stamford?
Who will Jan find to run it?
There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
Congress has already said it will hold a hearing to investigate how much money Comcast will line their pockets with in order to gain "undue advantages" from the deal that gives it access to programming.
FTFY
GE already owns 80%. Comcast is just buying a majority share of the company so they have final say on any decision.
Gee, it was almost as if the GP was being sarcastic and making a joke.
That was pretty hardcore dude. You're soooo nonconformist. Keep raging against the machine while Cheetos dust covers your neckbeard down in your parent's basement.
If it is so bad, you should call them ShitTorrents.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Consequent to we being acquired by Comcast, our new CEO Heisa I Diot has directed you to remove all Cable Guy coming late, Cable companies forcing you to stay home all day for a 5 minute service jokes from your repertoire. Please remember the number of stattelite receptions breaking off at the most importunate moment will have a bearing when the annual bonuses are discussed. Have a nice day
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
There's virtually nothing good on television anyway
It's ok dude, I'm sure they're gonna bring back Firefly. It's true cause I signed this one petition online and everything!
Very true. Amazingly enough in 2009 someone can get a hit on their pager, call up their buddy on a rotary-dial POTS phone, and go over the latest want ads in the local newspaper. All in a quest to move out of the basement...
As a Time Warner customer, I look forward to losing NBC again this Summer as Time Warner tries to convince me that the evil NBC wants to charge me more money for my tv, and how Time Warner is either forced to raise my rates, or drop NBC coverage. Lame, lame, lame. AT&T, please extend your service about 10 more miles south.
"Attack of the Show," "X-play" and all the other last lingering remnants of the TechTV glory days are probably going to be replaced with old "Cheers" reruns. They've already started rerunning "Lost" and "Heroes" on G4. Pretty soon the G will stand for "generic."
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
but good news for GE bond holders. Cash from Comcast should enable them to pay off some of their debts.
I could only hope this would end in disaster for both evil corporations.
Yet, I have serious doubts about that. When two legions that have sold their souls to the devil for money combine on a project that seems doomed from the start, I'm wary to dismiss it on the grounds that it defies common sense, and try to find out what they're looking at.
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
I agree that Comcast is too large at this point and should be hit with the monopoly hammer. I don't think it counts as "too big to fail" though -- society would not be ruined if people lost their cable tv like if they lost their homes or cars. In fact, losing certain shows might improve society considerably.
When TW bought AoL, AoL had chatrooms which were already horribly out of date and irrelevant.
NBC has Leno. I don't see how this could fail
More music, fewer hits
Comcast is gunning for vertical integration. In order to optimize the benefits from its vertical integration, it has a very strong incentive to prioritize NBC sites and content over other sites and content.
I'm convinced that Comcast's package will include optimized delivery for NBC sites and content, only available to Comcast users. In and of itself not a bad deal, but there is very little difference to the end-user between optimizing delivery of your own stuff and throttling delivery of other people's stuff - except that one is dirt cheap to do, and the other is expensive. In a few years, I'm expecting Comcast to offer sites like it currently offers channels: with different pay tiers and different performance.
Nice troll sig, by the way. I'll reply with a quote from Sagan: " They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
It's the dinosaurs who are the ones funding the production of the entertainments that you are, ummm, appropriating from the torrents. You'd better hope they stay flush somehow, or the only piece of new content left to pirate will be Joss Whedon's grocery list. Oh, wait, I know -- we'll just instruct all the professional producers and directors to put their work on their blogs and fund production on what we tip them in PayPal. Worked for This Guy, didn't it?
Seriously, this was on the front page of every news outlet... almost two days ago. I know that there's a bit of a lag time to get things on Slashdot, but honestly, is it asking that much to post big stories the same day they happen?
Dead? Wow. Apparently the 300 million people in the US that are going to turn their TVs on tonight are pretty oblivious, too. Who knew?
Whale
Originally NBC was owned by the now defunct RCA. NBC was founded essentially to make content so that RCA could sell more Radios and then Televisions and all the equipment needed to create a radio and tv station. So, not only did RCA own the pipe, they had actually owned the -hardware-. Eventually GE would buy RCA in the early 1980s for the sole purpose of getting NBC. They basically kept NBC, closed RCA, but sold the logo to the French. As an Ex-RCA Employee, I still curse Jack Welch but.... in those days, the merger of RCA and GE which should have been seen as troubling was almost irrelevant as both companies were still selling tubes in the age of the transistor and Sony was really stomping up a storm.
Bottom line is, yeah, it will be a big company, but there's a lot of other media and a lot of other competition out there.
[disclosure: I live in the Philly area and, having lost the World Series to the Yankees, the thought of the NBC HQ from NYC to Philly seems like it would be really sweet. They got the team, but we get the TV].
This is my sig.
When are we as a country going to learn? We gave these shitheads municipal monopoly power, and now they want to radically expand their control. What we need is a law that states this: You can own the pipe, or you can deliver through the pipe, but you cannot do both.
Even Jesus hates listening to Creed.
They were the majority owner previously. Way to be a day late AND wrong.
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
GE currently owns a majority stake in NBC Universal (they needed to negotiate with the other owner, Vivendi, before they could proceed with this deal). Under the deal, a new company is being formed, with GE contributing NBC Universal and Comcast contributing some of their content assets and a bunch cash (or cash like assets). Comcast ends up with 51% ownership of the new company, and GE 49%.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
BTW it's also amusing how much you disparage their content and yet you still download it from BitTorrent to watch it. Rage out, dude!!!
Comcast is too large? You realize the part they're buying was owned by Vivendi and GE, right, two of the biggest companies in the world?
This will allow for competition for those people who are stuck with Comcast being the sole provider.
Wonder what effect this will have on plots in 30 Rock. Is Jack going to gun for CEO of Comcast now? That lacks the same punch.
I would have enjoyed that TV show a lot more if all the actors went topless
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
As to my musical preferences, I think Immortal Technique, Dead Prez, Jedi Mind Tricks, Talib Kweli, and Sniper provide us with a more authentic and more literate example of the anti-conformist message.
So your tastes are actually worse than I thought. Secondly, the more times you have to point out that you're non-conformist just goes to show how much of a tool you are.
Which is why the media companies are already dead. They pander to the least common denominator and that ultimately satisfies nobody.
And yet you still download their content from bittorrent. I'm sure that shows them good, right?!??! Right??!
There is nothing more fulfilling in the world than the righteous indignation of the prick'd simian.
I prefer "bald tailless monkey".
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
The Office, 30 Rock, Better of Ted just to name a few. I just hope Comcast doesn't take them off Hulu.
NBC Universal owns (a large part of) Hulu.
Hulu obviously competes with Comcast's cable TV offerings. They'd much rather you pay for a cable TV subscription than watch the same shows for free, legally, online.
Ever since the deal was announced, Comcast has made a few noises about not wanting to kill Hulu off, but excuse me if I don't quite believe them given their track record.
Because that's what conglomerates do. They diversify. And there seems to be some confusion. GE already owned an 80% stake in NBC. In layman's terms they actually have to buy the remaining 20%, then sell 51% to Comcast.
They own it already? Well, a majority stake anyway.
"A REAL computer has ONE speed and the only powersaving it permits is when you pull the power leads out of the back!"
The lack of money is exactly why I watch the networks, and while they're not going anywhere. While friends are spending $100/month to watch a compressed TV signal, I get uncompressed HDTV for free. Sure I miss the cable channels, but it's not like there's nothing on. NBC alone has Conan O'Brien, The Office, 30 Rock, Law and Order, and SNL.
People are realizing that the networks are the most affordable way to watch good TV and that's not going to change anytime soon.
Wow, 97% of the US population, infants and the homeless included, watch TV every night? Far out, man!
GE is just a finance company. Moving NBC from a finance company to a cable company might stir up the industry a bit, don't you think?
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
Doesn't NBC partly own Hulu? Isn't Comcast's Cable system in competition with Hulu?
Seems like America keeps making the same mistake over and over again. Don't allow a regulated monopoly to be a distributor and the content provider. Failure to follow this inevitably results in corruption and anti-competitive behavior. This applies to:
- Power production and power distribution
- Cellular network providers, cellular phone manufacturers, voice service providers
- Phone companies and voice providers
- Internet service providers and internet content providers
- Cable television delivery and cable content providers
- The Telegraph (recent Slashdot article on this)
The smoke has not yet cleared over Comcast illegally throttling connections. Why the heck would we consider allowing them to own a major content provider?
Anyway, I would feel better if beleaguered NBC was being bought by a company a little less awful. A typical Comcast "service" center looks like the visitor's lounge at a prison, bullet-proof glass and everything. This is the company that will have editorial control over NBC, MSNBC, and CNBC.
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
...and anybody savvy just uses BitTorrent anyway.
I assume you're talking about using BitTorrent to download copyrighted material?
That free ride wont last forever.
There's virtually nothing good on television anyway
Southpark
I prefer "bald tailless monkey".
That whole bald part certainly does not apply to me; I am covered in hair, as I suspect a large portion of my fellow nerds are.
SSC
Comcast definitely isn't "too big to fail." Comcast fails just fine regardless of it's size.
...they promised that this was in the best interest of their customers in order to ensure that everyone gets their fair share.
This makes me think of the US v. Paramount Pictures Supreme Court case, also known as the "Hollywood Antitrust Case of 1948". Once upon a time, film studios owned a large number of theaters. The studios-- and not the theater owners-- could dictate which films would be played and for how long (aka "block booking"), how much money would go to the studio vs. the theater etc. The result was less competition for good films, less profit for the theaters, and the studio dictated what the people saw.
This "vertical integration" -- controlling the production and delivery of the product top-to-bottom -- was decided 7-1 as an anti-competitive de facto oligopoly and the studios had to divest themselves of their theaters. The courts said that having one industry substantially control production of entertainment as well as its delivery network was monopolistic and a restraint on trade. They actually separated Paramount into two companies-- the studio (Paramount Pictures Corp.) and the theater chain (United Paramount Theaters).
I don't see how this Comcast thing is much different, but then, the underlying principals of this and most other regulatory decisions of the 1930s-40s have been thrown out the window to favor corporations interests over those of the public.
Note that the decision in this case, if you put it in the digital age, is even more dramatic than simple "network neutrality". It doesn't just suggest you must treat all content the same when delivering content. The principal idea as I read it is that if the studios-- say, Time Warner-- produces content, they shouldn't also monopolize the industry that delivers that content (say via Time Warner Cable). NBC and Comcast, to me, would have similar issues.
I've never understood why the Paramount Decree doesn't apply automatically. Probably because the Internet grew so fast as a legit media delivery system that the laws haven't yet caught up. But it seems to me that Network Neutrality would be a compromise position promoted by these cable/ISPs to ensure fair competition so they don't get separated from their parent companies.
In fact, thinking about it, yeah-- Network Neutrality does seem to be the compromise position (almost like the public option vs. single payer). Why isn't the public (EFF, etc.) asking to kill the whole vertical monopoly system? (Or... given the makeup of the court, it might backfire, and we'd be back to Fox Theaters and Paramount Theaters everwhere...)
Incidentally, as I understand it, the same thing has already happened in TV. Back in the day, individual producers would make shows and sell the rights to show them to the networks. Now, the networks produce the shows, own the shows, and distribute the shows. Top to bottom.
All mainstream media outlets are giant dinosaurs too stupid to realize they're already dead. There's virtually nothing good on television anyway; ad revenues are plummeting as consumers have no more money to spend, and anybody savvy just uses BitTorrent anyway.
So, where will the stuff on BitTorrent come from once the dinosaurs realize they're dead because the ad revenues are gone and stop producing content?
Putting the "anal" back into "analyst"...
I'm mostly peeved because they bought up my local cable company. Since then, the service has been dropping out several times a day and my bill has doubled. Their techs came out to fix things twice, charging each time but not fixing the problem. They also called me a geek because I had Ubuntu running on my laptop, which was not compatible with their modem. It was compatible just fine before they took over though....
Don't mod the OP funny, mod Insightful.
DTV Versus Comcast
Imagination drew in bold strokes, instantly serving hopes and fears, while knowledge advanced by slow increments...
I'd settle for Morena Baccarin, but the show was pretty damn good anyway.
First Versus, and now this. Directv must feel like they can't win.
I guess when the time comes I'll cut the lines to my satellite dish and just accept my new cable company overlords.
FioS HDTV is uncompressed...
Yeah, suck on that Comcast.
Could be better. He didn't even use the word "sheeple." Sheesh.
Comment of the year
I know a lot of the discussion of the dangers here are about the TV aspect of all of this, but here's something else that concerns me:
I watched some of Glenn Beck's "coverage" of Net Neutrality on YouTube once, and was shocked at how he pretty much left out what net neutrality actually means, added in a bunch of negative stuff that doesn't have anything to do with neutrality and told some lies that were somewhat related to neutrality. He complains that companies like Google are hypocrites because those guys made billions off of capitalism and now they supposedly want the government to steal control of the Internet from private industry (according to Beck).
So now that the only broadband ISP available in my area will own the majority of shares in the company that owns Glenn Beck's rival network, who's to say that Comcast won't degrade or charge me more to access either the Fox News channel on TV, or the Fox News website or Glenn Beck's or Rush Limbaugh's websites?
Why is it that Glenn Beck can be so paranoid about little things the government does, or could do, but he doesn't realize how his own viewpoints and lies can sell out our freedoms to the people who are the gatekeepers of TV and the Internet?
That is, Comcast is sitting on wads of cash, and buying NBC/Universal will protect it from...
FTFA:
Here's where it gets really interesting:
So there you have it. What could possibly go wrong with that?
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
I mean now that Comcast won't have to pay NBC and all NBC owned stations, I should have a reduced Comcast bill correct? Of course, I could just be naive....
While friends are spending $100/month to watch a compressed TV signal, I get uncompressed HDTV for free.
An over-the-air DTV channel is 19 Mbps. "Uncompressed HDTV" is 1920x1080 pixels * 30 frames per second * 12 bits per pixel (assuming downsampled chroma) = 746 Mbps, and that's without audio. So the networks use MPEG-2 video compression and AC-3 audio compression, the same used on DVD-Video, to squeeze the signal into something your antenna can pick up. But I will grant you that OTA is not re-compressed unless your local affiliate tries to pull a PBS and squeeze 1 HDTV channel and three SDTV subchannels into that 19 Mbps stream.
I'm sure the majority of Slashdot remembers TechTV. Then Comcast came along, bought it up, and merged it with G4. Then the good parts of TechTV went away (G4 never had good parts). Then TechTV went away entirely. Then most of G4 went away as well; I don't have it in my cable package (thank goodness), but as I understand it G4 has become Spike2, showing 6 hours of COPS, 6 hours of Wrestling, and late at night they might show some gaming content and a rerun of Screensavers.
NBC has been lacking, but they still have some quality content. You can kiss that all goodbye.
Stock ownership is about two things: financial speculation and power. Why can't consumer interests snap up controlling interests? You know, through user-directed 401k's and coordinated pension funds? Oh right, the Republicans murdered that option with the Taft-Hartley Act after WWII.
No it's not. Uncompressed 1080p would take something around 750 mbits of bandwidth to transmit. I highly doubt that Verizon is providing that much bandwith to each of their customers for HDTV service.
Or movies or music either. Oh and he can't pirate books because that also comes from those media dinosaurs too. He's probably just torrenting Linux ISOs and public domain music and movies.
Not disagreeing with you, but every episode of South Park is available to stream on their website.
Heh heh. I hate to break this too you, but if you're running Ubuntu... you are a geek. But it is kind of weird the cable modem doesn't work - I used to run Fedora without any problem, and I have Comcast.
I'm not sure what you mean by "stir up the industry a bit". GE is far from being just a finance company - they make everything from MRI machines to jet engines. As a result there is precious little NBC could report on that doesn't affect some part of the parent company. I'd much rather have a cable company running the network than a company that has a financial interest in selling fighters to despots, say, or getting favorable banking legislation through Congress.
The most Comcast can do is somehow favor their new pet network, which doesn't seem like that big of a deal now that everyone has 150 channels.
GE already had more than that. They are selling enough shares to bring them down to that figure. Either way, this is a terrible idea for our information access system. Mixing content with information distribution infrastructure is exactly the wrong way to go if we want broad-based content and interactivity. Regulators need to be pushing for a return to the Ma Bell model -- the common carrier that has nothing to do with the conversations on its lines. Even if Comcast were a trustworthy company, there's no way it will overcome the temptation to make its own content a little easier and cheaper to access. The owners of the cables need to choose whether to be common carriers or content providers, but not both.
I would have enjoyed that TV show a lot more if all the actors went topless
Ugghh...CBS Tried that with the Golden Girls once, and that episode sucked!
Guess you don't have FioS in your area.
Verizon simply takes the content as they get it from the station, and forwards it onto their users.
Comcast on the other hand, compresses it more and then sends it down the wires.
here is the discussion about it
When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.
OK, Mr. Genius. Put down the floppy diskette and slowly step away from the "time machine."
... and then they built the supercollider.
As noted above the 49% share for GE is a reduction, not a buy in. You can pretty sure this is the case if they take the time to state it's not. The whole family of companies that come and go over and under each others' names, and equally as often with one or more names or the action itself masked, do so for reasons often so obscure that one begins to think they conduct these "mergers" for misdirection. Frequently these activities are carried out to minimize predicted losses, to protect the others from association in the case of law suits, and for what appears to be which relationship between them will be most profitable in the near enough future to make it worth the trouble.
It's a long standing historical note that belies the relationship between NBC and GE. Specifically, 3 notes: G, E and C, the chimes that make up the NBC musical call sign. They've been in use for 80 years now. They stand for General Electric Company.
The refutation that's found its way into Wikipedia that this is false, essentially a business urban myth, is itself incorrect. The refutation states that "someone heard" the chimes being played over Atlanta's WSB during a football game and "asked to use" the signal, making them a trademark in 1931. Such is true, however the association between them was already close and tight. The football game in question was the 1929 Georgia Tech/Yale game. One would hope that NBC heard the chimes then, or even earlier if they'd been used. WSB was a charter affiliate of NBC, officially since Jan 9, 1927. That's all supported by data from the relevant Wikipedia sites as well as WSB and Ga. Tech histories. I'd heard about it from someone deep enough into early electronics business to know folks like Farnsworth, DuMont and Armstrong.
In those periods where one didn't "own" another, the relationship was a matter of business convenience. They have all been components in the largest body of business in the US if not the world.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Comcast 16/2(D/U) service. Ubuntu server on an old P-3 as a router. No issues. Incompatible? I call shenanigans.
More likely, the techs don't know the OS, so obviously it's incompatible. Sorry, TCP/IP is one of those "cross-platform" things, ya dig?
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Actually stats I have seen suggest the percentage is pretty close to that. Also let not forget that there are lots of illegal immigrants, students, and visitors. So yeah I'd buy 300 million.
some needs to buy comcast's 20% of csn chicago before nbc can mess the network up. At lest the teams have the power there and I don't want it to end like what nbc has done with the weather channel.
and one good over this is that the gov maybe force comcarp to put csn philly on dish and direct tv.
But THE NFL will not let comcast make Sunday night foot ball cable only much less not OTA for the locals teams in the game. even ESPN MNF games are on OTA for the local teams.
I don't the think the IOC and USIOC will let them make the 2012 games cable only or if that happens they will not be on nbc / comcarp in 2016. EPSN or FOX will have them.
You're trying to play internet tough guy? On /.?
Reallllly?
Just how sad IS your life?
They may move them to a lower level as Chicago land comcast systems are a bad ripoff right now SCI-FI / Syfy is in Digital preferred / classic while in all others systems it is in analog / starer / will work with a dta.
CSN + needs a full box (SD) at about $5-$6 each. You can not use a DTA to get it same thing for SCI-FI as well.
and Digital preferred / classic cost about the same as direct tv HD dvr but you need to pay $15-$20 /m more per tv for a HD dvr on comcast and $8-$10 per HD box. Direct tv just wants $5/m box 1 free to add any box.
speed is in the sports pack in parts of area and WHY IS FOX MOVIE CHANNEL in the SPORTS PACK?
Even WOW cable as SPEED, SCI-FI, CSN and CSN+ in anglog cable so you need a full box at each tv view them.
Troll harder, he hasn't responded to all your posts yet! Your existence must be affirmed!!!
Someone should start a pool for how long this will last before they separate again.
Get bigger.
Once they are big enough, they will be bought by Disney for a true 'end to end' control of the market.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The days of the government stepping in and help out the citizens have long since past. Might as well get used to the idea of all our content ( and eventually, knowledge ) being controlled by 1 or 2 giant monopolies. And later, our freedom as they buy more 'ip enforcement' laws.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
See here to see and hear what Conan, Andy, etc. said about this news.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Not to mention the Sheinhardt Wig Company and the AHP Chanagi Party Meats company of Pyongyang, North Korea.
This is one of the funniest, yet also insightful comments I've seen in a long time.
Now the giant conglomerates just need to start failing one by one, so the government can hand them trillions of dollars for being "Too Big to Fail".
Hey! It worked for the banks!
"Free Market" is THE OPPOSITE of the corporate monopoly system we are currently living in. And this system is bad for every single living thing on the planet, and most importantly the development and prosperity of our own species, humanity.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
That's not uncompressed, that's just not double-compressed. That being said, the studios probably send out a signal that's compressed just enough to get it down to a reasonable size while avoiding any crazy-obvious artifacting. As noted above, uncompressed HD takes a truly absurd amount of bandwidth (1920x1080x3x24 Bps ~ 142MBps ~ 1.1Gbps, and that's just for 24p material - multiply by 2.5 for 60p. Give or take, as video has all sorts of weird formatting stuff that math doesn't account for)
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?